Re: setting the system clock before launching operating system

[Vesa Jääskeläinen]

Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
> On Sat 2008-09-13 00:52:47 -0400, Arthur Marsh wrote:
> 
>> Vesa Jääskeläinen wrote, on 2008-09-13 00:13:
>>> Geoff Karl wrote:
>>>> I would like to be able to set the clock to a particular time
>>>> automatically before launching an operating system.
>>>>
>>>> Anyone have any ideas if this can be done during the boot loader process?
>>> Yes it can be done. But why?
>> Some machines (e.g. a Compaq Armada 1750) don't have the option to set
>> the time via BIOS or set-up boot floppy.
>>
>> When the time had been lost, I'd have start-up problems with fsck
>> checking when the file system had last been checked.
> 
> The same is true for many older PowerPC machines whose mainboard
> batteries have begun to fail.  Being able to automate the bootloader
> to say "look, if the hardware clock thinks it is 1904 (or 1900, or
> 1970, or anytime before the turn of the century) it is probably wrong;
> set it to at least 2008" at every boot would be pretty useful.

Well... replace the battery ;)

> This is especially useful on 32-bit architectures with a default
> hardware epoch date so far in the past that crappier NTP
> implementations think that it's actually in the future.  I've dealt
> with this at the OS level (for various OSes) on older PowerPC
> machines, and it's doable, but a pain.  Being able to guarantee that
> no matter what OS you're booting, the initial clock will be at least
> set to time X would be pretty handy.

...and update your NTP software ;)

Should we one day support NTP time synchronization within GRUB 2, then
it would be usable. Personally I do not see need for this.

I would propose that you use your OS startup script to handle this case
in case you refuse to/can't replace your battery.